Jeffrey D. Sadow is an associate professor of political science at Louisiana State University Shreveport. If you're an elected official, political operative or anyone else upset at his views, don't go bothering LSUS or LSU System officials about that because these are his own views solely.
This publishes Sunday through Thursday with the exception of 7 holidays. Also check out his Louisiana Legislature Log especially during legislative sessions (in "Louisiana Politics Blog Roll" below).

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13.2.14

GOP, Obama, Landrieu move her closer to checkmate

Her political life continues, but
the sharks definitely are circling and continue to close in on Sen. Mary Landrieu as her reelection polling
numbers erode further, Republicans maneuver to leave her no way out, and the Gromyko
of the White House refuses to toss her a lifeline.

The Louisiana Democrat, despite
having an exceptionally
liberal voting record in her 17 years in office, has survived because she
began with a narrative that she was a moderate willing to buck her party on
important issues to the state and expanded it to an imagery that her experience
made her too effective for replacement. But (brace yourself in visualizing this
metaphor) the clothes are off the empress for many, beginning with her failure
to vote against the misnamed Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act
(“Obamacare’), which otherwise would have defeated it. As the latest
poll numbers from the Democrat-sympathetic Public Policy Polling shows, an
absolute majority of registered voters loath the law that already is pricing
many out of the insurance market, forcing them to change providers, encouraging
rationed and less convenient care, and making some pay for the leisure
activities of others.

As a result, the PPP summary
notes she has an absolute majority of respondents also disliking her, a number
that has continued to rise (and this trend perhaps explains why PPP had a gap
of just two months from the last polls of this contest, which ballooned nearly
to five months this time). In tandem, keeping in mind that the voting model
here by using registered voters disproportionately favor Democrat candidates
and is based upon presidential, not midterm, electorates that also favor
Democrats, support for her main challenger Republican Rep. Bill Cassidy has continued to rise as
has his name and party recognition. If not already, this trend threatens to
become irreversible.

The precariousness of her
position cannot be understated. In no recent poll has she even approached 50
percent of the intended vote, in this one holding just 45 percent and one point
ahead of Cassidy, obviously within the margin of error. Not knowing comprehensively
polling information of every Senate contest of the past few decades, I’ll use a
qualifier, in that, absent some fantastic scandal or gaffe, I know of no Senate
incumbent who ever has won reelection with the likeability, intent-to-reelect,
and raw voting for numbers that she has nine months or fewer out from the
election. These must reverse if she has any hope at all to get another six
years.

With the moderate sheep’s
clothing off the liberal wolf that she is, the only way she can restore the
illusion to do this is to validate the narrative that she is effective in
bringing about good policy outcomes for the state. Except she is getting no
traction on the two current big issues for the state other than Obamacare that
pummels her, drawing up flood control policy that neither drastically affects
some policyholders nor perpetuates an actuarially-unsound program and expansion
of opportunity in the energy sector.

Landrieu has tried to present
herself as a leader in revising a recently-passed enacted law that has passed
on astronomical rate increases for some and for others would do so to buyers of
their property, in effect driving down a sales price or even making the
property essentially unsaleable. Cassidy stole a march on her when his
amendment in this year’s budget to delay some of this became law, but she was a
leader in the Democrat-majority Senate to come up with a bill featuring
broader, permanent relief.

However, the
Republican-controlled House will not move on the bill, in part having gotten
permission from Pres. Barack Obama
by his administration saying they opposed the bill, even as he later clarified
to say he would not veto it. Instead, its leaders
are devising their own version that apparently would provide relief but
relying upon less government-centric mechanisms. Chances are the final product
will end up having Cassidy’s name on it, or as in the form of an amendment to
the Senate’s S.
1926, and it will get to the Senate.

Which puts Landrieu in a
humiliating position. Because Cassidy is not captive to a narrative that he
must prove “effectiveness,” Landrieu needs any passage far more than does he
and will approve of anything in order to be able to say she supported relief.
But, if not by a barrage of ads throughout, six months from now in some
hypothetical campaign debate Cassidy can remind listeners that the version
connected to him was the one that made it into law (in addition to the delay),
while hers ended up on the scrap heap. It’s a no-win situation for her: she
must vote for relief, but she will be forced into voting for it in a way that
invalidates her effectiveness narrative.

Even if this radical shill Rhea
Suh does not win confirmation, with Landrieu’s support of her in committee if
not on the floor, it’s just more campaign fodder for defeating her narrative.
It’s not only that she doesn’t have the influence to get her party to make
policy beneficial for her state, Cassidy can argue, but also that she’s
supporting policy-makers who want to rule against Louisiana’s best interests –
a line easily confirmed by the propensity of her leadership
political action committee JAZZ PAC for giving to candidates that fit this
profile. The ultimate implication is that she’s a hypocrite on this score,
and one wonders how long before it will be that Cassidy begins to plug away at
a gambit of publicizing this.

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